The Vitruvian Paradox
by Jebus Creiss
Summary: Squall returns from Cosmos' realm a changed man – grown, matured, wiser. Which should have been a good thing, if not for the fact that the Squall-shaped hole in his world's future has suddenly grown too small for this new Squall…
1. Juxtaposition

**Disclaimer:** Final Fantasy VIII, Dissidia: Final Fantasy, associated characters and their games of origin are the intellectual property of Squaresoft/Square Enix. Which is not me. If deed-poll could change this, I'm sure we'd all have heard of it by now…dammit.

**Rating: T**

**Category:** Crossover – FFVIII/FF-game to be announced/Dissidia (at beginning only); (Self-)Challenge – to be announced

**Summary:** Squall returns from Cosmos' realm a changed man – grown, matured, wiser. Which should have been a good thing, if not for the fact that the Squall-shaped hole in his world's future has suddenly grown too small for this new Squall…

**A/N:** Dissidia is included only as the starting point for this fic; as such, familiarity with the game is not required beyond the bare top-of-the-head basics. The actual crossover will become apparent in Chap-2, and be outright stated as Chaps-3/4 are posted. In the meantime, enjoy!  
>P.S.: The initial italics are deliberate.<p>

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><p><strong>The Vitruvian Paradox<strong>

**Chapter One: Juxtaposition**

—**ox-oxo-xo—**

_'_Rinoa…_' That was her name. And…this, Squall Leonhart realised as he stared down at the innocuous object that had just floated down to him in the wake of Zidane's departure, was her feather. To _Rinoa_ was the promise he'd spoken of to the Onion Knight a deceptively brief time ago, the promise he needed to fulfil now, at the end of their long war._

_He could feel a great, complex morass of memories, uncoiling within his brain like a waking serpent… or a…G.F.? Yeah, like a Guardian Force marking out its subliminal boundaries in his mind. Long-partitioned connections began to slip into place as the crucial component was restored – not instantly, for they had been sundered long ago and parts over-written uncountable times, but it wouldn't be long before his memory was as complete as it had ever been. Which…as it turned out, had never been that great to start with. But it was what he had to work with. It would do._

_It was a matter of minutes until full restoration was achieved, if he had to guess._

_A small corner of his mind noted the apparent solution to a minor mystery from earlier. Bartz's good luck charm had been finely (if accidentally) tuned to niggle at him with the unwanted sense of something precious that was missing to him. A _chocobo_ feather was a poor substitute to the one now nestled in his hand as far as he was concerned, but to each their own…_

_In the meantime, the world had slid into shades of scintillating blue, and he could smell flowers. Given that Tidus and Zidane had just experienced the same thing, Squall could only assume that his ticket home had just been punched._

_He regarded his compatriots, or at least those who hadn't left already, searching for some words of farewell… ideally, words which did not include 'whatever' or their equivalent among them. Apart from them in body he might have been for much of their latest journey, but not in spirit. For all their mistakes (not that he was innocent on that score), they had each held their own – and _prevailed_. They were worth knowing, worth remembering, even if most of them weren't people he would have just hung out with for kicks given the choice. It had been an honour to complete this mission alongside them._

_"Perhaps we can go on a mission together again."_

_Yeah, that would work. Not as pithy as Tidus' or Zidane's farewells, but it had the advantage of being true to his sentiments, the lessons he had learned here._

_As the world faded away, the last thing that he saw was Cloud Strife walking past him. And the last thing he heard as the vortex swallowed him was Cloud's reply._

_"Hmph… Not interested."_

_Squall's dry snort of exasperated amusement was lost to the others as he vanished…_

—_ox-oxo-xo—_

…_It wasn't as if he couldn't see Cloud's point. No doubt each of them had their own friends, back in the worlds they were returning to. To each their own, after all – and each home called them all._

_Or maybe Cloud Strife was just an antisocial jerk. Whatever._

_Meanwhile, his apparent surroundings had plunged into a stygian depth so potent that it seemed almost solid. If not for the way that those bands of particularly thick darkness pulsed, rushing past over and under and to his sides as they shot away into the distance as if he were falling face-up down an endless tunnel – and if not for the way that he still appeared to be glowing bright blue and easily visible, thus able to pick up the differing tones in the rings of black – he might have been justifiably alarmed._

_That given, it would likely be a good idea to see what exactly he was hurtling towards._

_Turning turned out to be tricky, but focusing on that lingering scent of flowers seemed to help for some reason. Probably helped with his sense of direction…or something._

_Irrelevant seconds ticked into meaningless minutes as Squall continued to fall, the rusty links of his original memories drifting into place in fits and clumps as his personal shard of Cosmos began to dissipate in lockstep. He let the integration happen at its own pace, watching instead with detached interest as his gunblade abruptly morphed into the familiar adamantine dimensions of Lionheart. His clothing shifted slightly, scraping against his skin as it followed suit; the eldritch tingling of his pockets did not go unnoticed either, his pocket dimension's controls presumably resetting to their native configuration._

_Squall couldn't help but twitch as three distinct aggregates of consciousness tumbled out of the disordered coils of his memory-bundle and looked around in confusion. The trio of newly released G.F.s quickly communed with each other and with his inner databank of events, and understanding dawned – the last they'd known, they had been in the middle of—_

_In the middle of…_

_Something. Something terrible, and terribly important. Something that had his G.F.s suddenly thrashing about in alarm, as a light began to wink at the end of the tunnel._

_And as that terrible understanding dawned on Squall in turn, that light snapped into focus—_

_The time warp._

_The barren, shrinking island trap at Time's end._

_The lost sorceress, floating dead in a space made purely of imagined fear impregnated with projected malice._

_The lost warrior, scrabbling at his face, in the depths of outwardly inflicted madness… at the incorporeal, inexorable hands of the Entity, scrabbling to grasp something _far_ more dangerous than the youth's physical form, lashing out at its destined destroyer in its last, desperate attempt to save itself – by stripping the stranded man of his _own_ self._

_There was a Moment, one single Moment, in which the returning Squall gazed from within the vortex, from without his body, at the face of his imminent demise, falling helplessly towards himself like a lamb to the slaughter—_

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><p>It would take <em>years<em> to even begin to unravel what happened in that Moment, and in the pivotal Moment which followed on its dying breath. That forensic investigation was conducted by others, more scientifically minded than one Squall Leonhart; even so, it would take decades for those inquiring minds, minds like Ellone Loire and Quistis Trepe (though categorically _not_ Doctor Odine, which admittedly might have added to the delay) and other minds never known to the Orphanage Gang, to decode the specifics, the many forces at play in that catalytic twist of the fates.

A name, based on the drawings of a long-dead philosopher of another world, was nonetheless eventually assigned to the unique phenomenon: the Vitruvian Paradox…


	2. Climax

**Disclaimer:** Not mine. Refer first chapter.

**A/N:** See? No more Dissidia… Snippets will no doubt be referenced at some point, but Dissidia itself is just not that important in the context of this story. Now, the actual crossover is about to be introduced – not outright _stated_ quite yet, just rather obvious.  
>P.S.: No OC's have been used in this chapter.<p>

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><p><strong>The Vitruvian Paradox<strong>

**Chapter 2: Climax**

—**ox-oxo-xo—**

Later, when he had time and inclination to think about that Moment, Squall would pinpoint the crucial difference between the past and present iterations of himself.

_Squall Leonhart, screaming in reflexive anguish as his world's anchors crumbled around him—  
>Squall Leonhart, screaming in reflexive fury as his enemy's final strike tensed to slam home—<em>

In the end, it came down to identity. One was alone – the other was not. One had doubted his bonds – the other had hammered out that doubt. One was being blindsided in his time of need – the other could see the attack for what it was.

One was on the verge of catatonia – the other still had his faith.

In that Moment, however, reason was subjugated before action. _One Moment, Squall was spiralling into his Squall-shaped slot, naked and quailing before the godlike might of Hyne the Magician_ – the next, Squall's path had veered off ever so slightly, Lionheart raised high as it slammed with devastating impact right through the Great Hyne's soulself.

In the moments afterward, as Squall sailed straight over the platform's dirt edge without ever making groundfall, he smirked exultantly as the godling's impotent, helpless cry of despair rang out behind him.

He didn't gloat for long, though – he had places to be. Mental image-captures of flower-fields mixed in the heat of the moment with feathers and long-haired brunettes in his mind's eye as Squall bent every iota of his focus into following the heavenly smell of his destination, watching with ever-growing anticipation as the time-warp's boundaries below him twisted into a field of glowing flowers, which he rocketed towards at eye-blurring speeds. Closer, _closer_…

Only for the flower-stalks to grow to the size of trees as he fell _past_ the petals, his bent-knee legs passing right _through_ the ground—

—ox-oxo-xo—

—_Pain_. Burning agony, tearing at his senses and sanity like he'd been dunked in a pool of acid. That was the first sensation, when he blinked and realised that he was _under_ the flower-field… only, this was like no other patch of dirt he had ever seen.

Blessed numbness flooded through his system as he reflexively called for Bahamut, allowing him to devote a precious few seconds to examine his surroundings as the Guardian Force soaked the brutal onslaught of poison-like damage. The G.F.'s attempt at manifestation perished stillborn, but by that time Squall's left hand was in his pocket, frantically calling up X-Potions and Remedy Pluses to down while he processed his observations.

He appeared to be stuck in a dark, translucent sea of some strange liquid, laced with thick tendrils of acidic viridian that ensnared him in its web like seaweed. More priceless seconds were devoted to inuring himself to the burning sensation, followed by an attempted Doomtrain summoning to allow him to reach for his gunblade.

During the first abortive summoning, the tendrils had pulled back and flailed about like a child accidentally sticking their hand on a hotplate – and afterward, there had been a tiny fraction of time between the summons' failure and the renewed grip within the trapping sea's clutches. In that slice of relative freedom during and following the second abortive summoning, Squall's Lionheart flickered out in all directions, sundering the grasping threads surrounding him. The tentacle-like tendrils retreated to just outside the range of his blade, waving to and fro as if considering their positioning.

Squall popped another tandem handful of X-Potions and Remedy Pluses, one of each every three to four seconds to keep from redlining, as he considered his own position.

He was underground. Or under water. Or whatever this toxic gunk was.

Hopefully, that meant that there was a surface to reach.

Squall squeezed off an Aura spell in between gulps of restoratives, picking his moment until the familiar rush of adrenaline presented itself. He grasped that opportunity in both hands, Lionheart lashing out so quickly that the green serpents withdrew another foot to wait out the adamantine storm. Had the opening for a Lionheart sequence followed, he would have attempted to direct his momentum upwards to reduce his assumed depth – but instead, the _actual_ desired result came forth in a spike of energy over ten miles high.

As the Blasting Zone began to collapse, he pushed himself up along the cleared surface-ward path—

—Only to cry out with frustration as neon binds as far as his eye could see began to flow and entwine together around him, entrapping him within the luminescent maelstrom…

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><p>There was something about this situation which somehow struck Dr. Garth Francis as obscene. Sure, it was given that there was nothing that he – or the wrecked town's residents, for that matter – could do about the impending calamity. But the concept of pulling out deckchairs and kicking back to watch Meteor plummet down directly on top of the Planet's most populous city just didn't sound right no matter how he tried to phrase it in his head.<p>

Not that he was alone – in either sense. There were over a thousand deck-chairs (or associated variants – armchairs, benches, logs, blankets spread over grass) dotting the hilltop half-a-mile east of the boiling pool of mako on which Mideel had once stood, most of them facing north to watch as Meteor's crimson-glowing head plunged below the horizon. Most of the town had showed up to watch the 'fireworks' – at least, if you didn't count the various couple sneaking off to nearby clearings and other spots for what he'd heard Nurse Cromartie calling 'apocalypse nookie' as if it were some run-of-the-mill trope to explain and exploit.

There was going to be a shortage of morning-after pills and other chemical abortion-related medication. The prices would triple, if not quintuple. The doctor just _knew_ that's how it would turn out.

…Assuming, of course, that the world _didn't_ end. Which, as the horizon under Meteor's projected impact zone first flared a bright, pure white and then began glowing an ugly red as the ground began to tremble, seemed to be an increasingly unlikely outcome.

As jaded and lackadaisical as he could be on occasion, however, he _was_ a medical professional and quite proud of this.

Which meant that when the mako lake first started shooting out flares and then started spinning up and out and spiralling northward towards the impact site like the world's biggest and eye-searingly greenest ever waterspout, his second thought was for the people (mostly couples, or at least couples of the moment) who had stuck closer to the town's former site that evening. (His _first_ thought, of course, being something unprintable.)

The largest congregation of Mideel's residents mostly stared transfixed at the sky, either fatalistic at their collective prospects or just plain fascinated at the spectacle. A modest number of residents _did_ spill out of the woods nearer to the town's former site (modest in number if not always in state of dress), either attempting to act innocent or just gawping at the massive finger of god stretching out towards Midgar – and Dr. Francis noted absently, there were other such luminescent makospouts arcing their way there from other directions. Most of his attention, however, was diverted into gathering up Nurse Cromartie and whoever else was willing and able to venture closer to the spout's point of origin and check if anyone was splashed or otherwise hurt.

The initial findings were surprisingly optimistic. There had been a few close calls with that minor earthquake before the mako sprung forward, and one poor man who'd parked out on the lip of the viridian lake had gotten his leg drenched when the footing gave way, but all in all it could have been worse.

There was, however, one strange and frightening case.

The makospout, as with other such twisters, was in no way orderly in its direction or cohesivity. In _general_ it formed a thick airborne stream flowing north towards Midgar, but that didn't stop it from winding and writhing about as if it had a life of its own, or from spinning off into loose spindles of 'thread' that snaked around before rejoining the greater aggregate.

One of those looping loose threads formed like a flare, stretching out over a hundred yards east of the main spout – only to forcefully spit something out of it before coiling back into the windless tornado.

The something was a person, a young man who no-one recognised even after all the mako was hosed off him. A warrior of some description, from the gunblade he'd been clutching in one hand, but not in any kind of uniform. And bizarrely, still (albeit briefly) conscious; the man had according to witnesses gurgled something about finding someone called Noah or something, before succumbing to the mako-poisoning at last.

Once the man had been stretchered into the Medical Tent that passed as their temporary clinic, Dr. Francis and Nurse Cromartie went to work, carefully stripping away and bagging his clothing and eventually managing to prise the weapon from his hand, washing away the acidic substance and beginning their in-depth diagnoses and treatments. The damage wasn't limited to mako exposure, either – that mako-stream had not been gentle about expelling him from its innards. There were bone fractures, lacerations, and possible internal damage – and while the actual levels of mako-poisoning were surprisingly low in scale, they were still high enough to interfere with the treatment of his other injuries if not carefully taken into account.

It wasn't until the sun rose that they wound up their triage and snapped out of their handy distraction… and realised that the world was still spinning and they were all alive.

Well. That was a nice surprise.

The next question, of course, being: what was next?

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><p><strong>Ending AN:** So, question. Should I move this story to the newly revealed fandom category? There will be snapshots about the VIII world, and this will be mostly Squall-centred, but it does largely happen on the new world. Thoughts?


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